Quote from the book

"I knew what I was doing when I approached you," she said. "I was so certain, as never before in my life. The moment I saw you, I knew what I wanted. Life is oppressive here. You like the mountains and, yes, they are beautiful. But sometimes they resemble a wall which has been built around me. I feel locked in. There are days at which I would like to dive into the sea, just to be free. When you came, it was like seeing the sea. I knew I had to come up to you and take your arm. Something very beautiful would happen then. And it really happened. Do you believe me?"

"An atmosphere of detachment, not present-day. But fascinating because of its beautiful language and because the reader feels that there is something in the wind."

About the novel

"De Antitheek" is a novel about a small town, Geitvågen, on an island in Northern Norway, north of the Polar Circle, presumably on the Lofoten islands. A Dutch boy, John Wilton, gets entangled in the social relations in this town. But John himself is not altogether OK and that has severe consequences for life in Geitvågen...

"John is directed to a ramshackle youth home occupied by a group of people who form a music band. They call it "De Antitheek". In their view, usual discotheque music is influenced too much by commerce. (they could be right!)....

The novel plays in Northern Norway in the year 1972, when the first referendum on membership of the European Community was held. John Wilton, an 18-year old Dutchman, arrives in the small town of Geitvågen. These friends bring him into touch with a group of people of his age who have established an alternative youth centre, the Antitheek, as a protest against the ruling discotheque culture in the town.

"... miraculously fine pictures of some people, but particularly of nature and the landscape..."

John is allowed to stay in the Antitheek and falls in love with the girl Sissel. He works illegally in the fishing industry and would like to stay on the island, but is sent back by the police to his home town in order to apply for a residence permit. He does not succeed and returns to Geitvågen. Shortly after his return, his relationship with Sissel is broken. He is helped by his friends and stays temporarily at different places on the island. In the meantime, John is in conflict with an unknown person who wants him to disappear from the place. Several buildings are destroyed by fire and also the Antitheek burns down. Olav and her new boy friend understand that something is thoroughly wrong with John and they force him to leave the island. In the middle of the polar winter.

The incessant rains during autumn! At certain moments I had the feeling that I should shake the book the let the water drip out."

"De Antitheek" is not autobiographical. I did, however, stay in Northern Norway for almost a year in the period 1972-73. The sketches of the landscape, the seasons and society are impressions from reality. Some characters were more or less used as a model, but in all cases these characters where changed or combined with others. The occurances where all faked but sometimes reality helped a bit. Should the hotel fire have been left out?

Geitvågen means Goat Bay. The name is fiction. There is a small place in Northern Norway with this name, but that is only a beach along a fjord. In reality, the model for Geitvågen is the town of Svolvær, capital of the Lofoten Islands. You will find a goat shape rock there and a white stone church. Descriptions of the surroundings are largely realistic.

The manuscript deserves to become a book, because it offers an important view on our local environment in a transition

John Wilton is is eighteen and has not yet learned to reflect seriously about his own life, however deeply he may experience what happens to him. In the course of the novel he learns to understand some important features of his character, but his psychological development is not the central issue in this novel. It is the sketch of a town, its surroundings and its social life.

The process in which John recognizes his own character may be interesting. He is not used to reflect deeply about his own life and, moreover, he needs a lot of energy to prevent his emotions from taking the lead. On purpose John is described in such a way that the reader is almost as little provided with knowledge as he is himself. Information about his behaviour and motives is only given by very small portions.

The novel "De Antitheek" plays in Northern Norway in 1972, the year of the first referendum about Norwegian membership of the European Community, now the European Union.

"This is a delightful picture of a time of transition. Exactly these years before the first EC referendum were so special to us. For our part they were a confrontation between an old and a new era. And we, in a bitter fight for our right to self-determination and the preservation of our cultural inheritance, we opened our doors to the Europe we did not want to be part of.
In this sense, the history moves at two levels, being a unity at the same time."

"I read it at a stretch. It is a beautiful book and in my opinion you can write very well. Sometimes I could not help underlining a sentence. Delicious imagery: ... "Horsetail fluttering like a bird bound by the legs". Or snow (like I know it from Iceland) ... "white like curd in an opened cloth". Reading such descriptions makes one lay down the book for a while to imagine once more what it looks like."

"And then the plot (...), giving the reader the impression that he is forced to rethink his opinion about the 'I' thoroughly... Ha, just continue writing like that!!!"

I tried to write the story in the third person ("he"), but that did not succeed. It appeared inevitable to present the town through the eyes of a stranger as directly as possible. This resulted in a main character with peculiarities which interact with occurences in the town.

"I did not really understand the I-form. It was a bit mysterious why the author had chosen to do so. But at the end I thought: the I-form is allright. It forces the reader to get to know the characters through the eyes of the I-person. Using the he-form, the book would have been entirely different."